Glass substrate transport box containing disposable support boards

ABSTRACT

A transport box for glass substrates includes an upright box body having a rectangular inner space, an upper opening defined by four upright walls, and a bottom face. The transport box further includes a dust-free bag and two support boards, wherein each of the two support boards has a plurality of parallel slots for supporting edges of the glass substrates; the dust-free bag being placed inside of the box body, an opening of the dust-free bag facing the upper opening of the box body, and an edge of the opening of the dust-free bag being disposed over an upper edge of the four upright walls; and the two support boards are placed in parallel with their respective slots facing each other in the dust-free bag, and fastened to the box body; therefore, the plurality of slots on the two support boards form a plurality of slot pairs for holding two edges of a plurality of glass substrates in parallel, thereby the edge of the opening of the dust-free bag can be folded to seal the plurality of glass substrates inside the dust-free bag.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to a transport box for highly clean glass substrates and more particularly, to a transport box for glass substrates that has disposable support boards and a dust-free bag.

2. Description of the Related Art

Glass substrates are very important materials for the manufacturing of LCDs, color filters, and like products. During the manufacturing of LCDs, the quality of the glass substrates has a serious affects on the yield. Consequently, the manufacturer of the glass substrates must not only make high quality glass substrates, but must also protect the glass substrates during transportation and prevent the glass substrates form being contaminated. Therefore, the transport box must be shockproof, dustproof, waterproof, have low thermal conductivity, low compression deformation, high impact strength, a high dimension stability, low moisture absorption rate, etc.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,588,531 or the parallel Japanese publication No. 7-132986 discloses a transport box for glass substrates. The transport box is composed of a body and a cover, and has the following characteristics: the body and the cover are made of a polyolefin foam having a foaming ratio of 3˜30 times and a thickness of 15˜100 mm. A pair of upright facing walls of the body have a plurality of slots for holding the glass substrates. This glass substrate transport box is expensive to manufacture, and it also imposes a high cost with reuse cleaning. The cleaning process includes water washing and manual organic solvent cleaning in a clean room. Due to the reuse cleaning process, the manufacturer of the glass substrates must keep in stock a large number of transport boxes, which leads to higher transportation costs. Furthermore, with increasing reuse of the transport box, the surface of the transport box may begin to generate dust and contaminate the glass substrates, which may also reduce the lifetime of the transport box.

Therefore, it is desirable to provide a transport box for glass substrates to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A main objective of the present invention is to provide a transport box for highly clean glass substrates to ensure the integrity of the quality of the glass substrates during transportation.

In order to accomplish the objective of the present invention, a transport box for glass substrates constructed according to the present invention comprises an upright box body having a rectangular inner space, an upper opening defined by four upright walls, and a bottom face; the transport box being characterized in that: the transport box further comprises a dust-free bag and two support boards, wherein each of the two support boards has a plurality of parallel slots for supporting edges of the glass substrates; the dust-free bag being placed inside of the box body, an opening of the dust-free bag facing the upper opening of the box body, and an edge of the opening of the dust-free bag being disposed over an upper edge of the four upright walls; and the two support boards are placed in parallel with their respective slots facing each other in the dust-free bag, and fastened to the box body with the dust-free bag between the box body and the two support boards, so that the plurality of slots on the two support boards form a plurality of slot pairs for holding two edges of a plurality of glass substrates in parallel, thereby the edge of the opening of the dust-free bag can be folded to seal the plurality of glass substrates inside the dust-free bag.

Preferably, two facing upright walls of the box body have two pairs of connecting slots, and the two support boards are inserted respectively into the two pairs of connecting slots with the dust-free bag between the box body and the two support boards, and the two support boards contact respectively the other two facing upright walls of the four upright walls.

Preferably, the transport box of the present invention further comprises a third support board identical to the two support boards, wherein the third support board is placed in the dust-free bag and onto the bottom face of the box body with the dust-free bag between the bottom face and the third support board, and a plurality of parallel slots on the third support board face the opening of the dust-free bag and are used for holding in parallel bottom edges of the plurality of glass substrates.

Preferably, the two support boards are rectangular or chamfered rectangular.

Preferably, the third support board is rectangular or chamfered rectangular.

The transport box for glass substrates in the present invention not only ensures the integrity of the glass substrates during transportation, but also provides a simplified structure for the box body of the transport box to reduce costs of the molds; additionally, the support boards are relatively easy to manufacture. Since the manufacturing costs of the support boards and a dust-free bag are relatively lower, and as they are easy to produce, they can be recycled as disposable material, thereby avoiding the need for any expensive and complicated organic solvent cleaning process in the clean room. Therefore, the present invention can avoid operation cost and capital cost for the cleaning process for the prior art glass substrate transport box. Further, the present invention can improve usage arrangements of the glass substrate transport box due to the above-mentioned cleaning process in clean room being omitted.

Other objects, advantages, and novel features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

FIGURE 1 is a perspective view of a transport box for glass substrates according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

A transport box for glass substrates in the present invention can be a transport box for glass substrates for LCDs. The transport box comprises a box body, a dust-free bag placed inside the box body, and two support boards inserted into slots of the box body to fix the dust-free bag. After the glass substrates are placed in the transport box, the dust-free bag is sealed and a cover is disposed over the box body to finish a packing process. The box body, the support boards and the cover are made of polyolefin foam with a low dust content, such as polypropene, and a suitable manufacturing method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,588,531. The dust-free bag of the present invention is a packing bag used for carrying optical devices, is made from a dust-free plastic material (mainly polyethylene resin), and is commercially available from the market.

After removing the glass substrates at the transportation destination, the box body can be returned to the manufacturer of the glass substrates and cleaned, and a new dust-free bag and new support boards can then again be placed in the box body. Replacing the dust-free bag and the support boards requires only about 10 to 15 seconds. Since the dust-free bag and the support boards can be replaced each time, no dust problem is created by repeatedly cleaning of the transport box.

Please refer to FIGURE 1. FIGURE 1 is a perspective view of a transport box for glass substrates according to a first embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, the transport box comprises a rectangular box body 10 and a cover 20. The cover 20 is used to cover an upper opening 11 of the box body to form a rectangular closed space for holding a plurality of parallel glass substrates. The transport box further comprises a dust-free bag 30 and three support boards 40. Each support board of the three support boards 40 has a plurality of slots 41 for supporting edges of the parallel glass substrates. The dust-free bag 30 is placed in the box body 10; an opening 31 of the dust-free bag and the opening 11 of the box body face up, and an edge 32 of the opening of the dust-free bag is disposed over an upper edge of four upright walls 12 of the box body.

Two of the three support boards 40 are placed in parallel with their slots 41 (the right hand side slots are not shown), facing each other in the dust-free bag 30 and fastened to two pairs of connecting slots 15 at two ends of the box body 10 with the dust-free bag 30 between the box body and the two support boards. Therefore, the plurality of slots 41 on two support boards 40 form a plurality of slot pairs for holding in parallel two edges of a plurality of glass substrates (not shown).

The remaining one of the three support boards 40 is horizontally placed in the dust-free bag 30 with its slots 41 facing up and is disposed onto an inner bottom face 13 of the box body 10 with the dust-free bag 30 between the bottom face of the box body and the support board. Furthermore, two longer sides of the horizontal support board 40 contact a bottom portion of the two upright walls 12 of the box body 10 with the dust-free bag 30 between the box body and the support board the dust-free bag 30, and two shorter sides of the horizontal support board 40 are limited by two pairs of upright strips 14 in the box body 10.

The three support boards 40 have identical sizes and shapes, and their slots 41 are symmetrical with each other through an imaginary vertical surface that evenly divides the box body 10, so that a left edge, right edge and bottom edge of a glass substrate can be inserted into three slots 41 of the three support boards 40 which are on the same plane; in other words, many glass substrates can be contained vertically and separately in the box body 10. Apparently, the horizontal support board 40 can be omitted while achieving the same purpose, but the glass substrates may not be as stable. After many glass substrates are held in the slots of the three support boards 40, the edge 32 of the opening of the dust-free bag 30 can be folded and sealed with tape, thus sealing the many glass substrates within the dust-free bag. Furthermore, the cover 20 is placed on the box body 10 to finish the packing process so that the glass substrates are kept clean during transportation.

Although the present invention has been explained in relation to its preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that many other possible modifications and variations can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as hereinafter claimed. 

1. A transport box for glass substrates comprising an upright box body having a rectangular inner space, an upper opening defined by four upright walls, and a bottom face; the transport box being characterized in that: the transport box further comprises a dust-free bag and two support boards, wherein each of the two support boards has a plurality of parallel slots for supporting edges of the glass substrates; the dust-free bag being placed inside of the box body, an opening of the dust-free bag facing the upper opening of the box body, and an edge of the opening of the dust-free bag being disposed over an upper edge of the four upright walls; and the two support boards are placed in parallel with their respective slots facing each other in the dust-free bag, and fastened to the box body with the dust-free bag between the box body and the two support boards, so that the plurality of slots on the two support boards form a plurality of slot pairs for holding two edges of a plurality of glass substrates in parallel, thereby the edge of the opening of the dust-free bag can be folded to seal the plurality of glass substrates inside the dust-free bag.
 2. The transport box as claimed in claim 1, wherein two facing upright walls of the box body have two pairs of connecting slots, and the two support boards are inserted respectively into the two pairs of connecting slots with the dust-free bag between the box body and the two support boards, and the two support boards contact respectively the other two facing upright walls of the four upright walls.
 3. The transport box as claimed in claim 1 further comprising a third support board identical to the two support boards, wherein the third support board is placed in the dust-free bag and onto the bottom face of the box body with the dust-free bag between the bottom face and the third support board, and a plurality of parallel slots on the third support board face the opening of the dust-free bag and are used for holding in parallel bottom edges of the plurality of glass substrates.
 4. The transport box as claimed in claim 1, wherein the two support boards are rectangular or chamfered rectangular.
 5. The transport box as claimed in claim 3, wherein the third support board is rectangular or chamfered rectangular. 